At this rate I’m blogging. I can just change the name of my blog from whatgavinlohsaidtoday.wordpress to whatgavinlohsaidthisdecade.wordpress 😀

Recently, my close friend came to comment on a recent presentation I made in school. He said that he thought that I was “smoking” my way through the Q&A. Okay by smoking here, we mean smoking as in smoke-screen. You know that right?

I was surprised. I thought I answered pretty coherently.

It was a MNO presentation, and my group was presenting on a particular idea known as “universalism”, whereby we see a trend in which our civilization tends towards a world where people start to increasingly hold just one particular set of beliefs and ethics true.

And a fellow student asked me if this was actually truly practical. He asked if I see a world where people start dressing and looking the same. Like clones. Initially the first thought through my head was that this guy is a plain dumbass, first of all, when did I even suggested that we’re gonna be looking alike. I was talking about a psychological trend. Not a physical trend. He totally took it the wrong way. (I was under the impression that our point was pretty clear, but clearly half the class wasn’t really following, cant blame them though HAH I was the same with the rest of the groups)

I still had to answer him nonetheless.

And I said, well now the world is as such (not my exact words, not so artas). We are clearly a very differentiated population. We all wanted to be different. And we have people tell one another that we’re all different.

That much is true, how often to we hear people telling us that we’re all different.

And how often do we struggle so hard to differentiate ourselves from the crowd.

Everyone of us is different.

But here’s the irony, I said, the irony is that everyone of us is similar in the way we want to be differentiated.

And instantly I saw the effect, the whole class was showing me this face, zomg he said something so deep and i’m still kinda figuring it out look.

Well, when I said what I said, I thought my answer was pretty implicit already, that I already answered his question. Not really realizing that people are not really comprehending my train of thought as yet. And before I justified my statement, I answered him that I thought that yes I do see a trend whereby we all are going to be universal, in a psychological sense.

Thinking back. People might have thought me smoking, because they fail to follow my exact train of thought. What I had meant to say then, will be focal point of my article today.

Well you see.

We all want to be differentiated. And yet we all are similar in the way we want to be different. There is the irony. But what’s the point here? What I meant to say is that wanting to be differentiated is a social construct, a civilization condition, that was imbued into us from modern society. If you tell me that your bid to be different is a totally unique situation, and the whole world is filled with everyone wanting to fit into the social norm, that yes, I’ll be inclined to agree with you. But I’m sorry to burst your bubble, you’re very much the same.

You see. Being differentiated is a modern social construct. It’s a modern societal ideal. We need innovators and entrepreneurs, and that’s why we need uniquely different people to build a differentiated pool of ideas businesses can work on. It is a hip hop culture, where people fight to stand out, to be uniquely ourselves. I don’t see how people in the past, living in caves, or living behind swords and shields would even bother with such obsession with differentiation. And it is through these subtle political, socio-economic changes that slowly conditioned us, throughout our lives, to think this way.

And that’s the thing about society and mass media. It influences you in these subtle, insignificant, invisible ways that you seem to think the ideas came from you within. What you fail to realize is that everybody else is subject to these conditions too.

And should we then accept my premise that the mass media is capable of influencing us so, we can then see that, where the need arises, society will make us the universal one-thinking population that the post-modern future will need.

At first look, one would no doubt perceive the two words “trust” and “faith” to be synonymous which each other.

Maybe they are, if you will like to define them to be. But at closer examination, I realize that they ain’t quite the same…

It’s September 7 today. And it has been a long time since I’ve blogged. Not surprisingly so, life has been kinda like an equivalent of drawing a straight line with a ruler for the past few weeks or so. In retrospect, I think it is even more monotonous than a perfectly straight line.

School has started for a while. And it was with a lot of discipline that I initially thought I was incapable of mustering that I sat down and planned my study plans for my next 5.5 years in NUS, given I’m intending to pursue a double masters and a honors bachelors.

I was very much unhappy with having to study for so long, I mean 5.5 years, there’s a huge opportunity cost there! I could have otherwise continued my initial pursuit of finance accreditations, in CFA, in FRM and what non, drop post grad, and start working say 3.5 years from now when I’m young, fairly healthy and fairly outward-looking in life still. HAH.

So I’ve decided, I need some planning. I need to cut down on my education timeframe from 5.5 years to a maximum of 4.5 years.

To illustrate what I have to do. I must set some things in perspective first. Should I follow the conventional route, I should take 4 years for my first BBA. Another 0.5 years for my Msc Mgmt. And another 1 years for my CEMs in (I hope) LSE. And the last 1 year in LSE, that is unavoidable. It is strictly 1 year of studies. Nothing I can do about that.

That will require, at the very least 160 Modular Credits for my BBA and another 32 for my Msc. Mgmt. Assuming I can gain full exemption from specific Mods from my Msc prog. from my BBA prog.

Back to the topic of Trust and Faith. To differentiate the two. Think of it this way. To trust, is to believe but with some certainty probably derived from experience. When you trust somebody, then that somebody must have done you good before. But to have faith, it’s simply to believe, and purely believe. Blinded maybe? Religiously perhaps? But they’re not quite the same.

I’m the kinda guy who can only trust. That’s why I don’t have faith in God.

But things are changing.

I’m stepping into a world unknown. Or at least I choose to.

Because I’ve made up my mind to pursue my double masters in 4.5 years instead of 5.5 years. And that’s something I have never ever done before, something I have never ever even thought I can do. Maybe it’s these few years. Or maybe it was my trip to America. I’ve changed. And I opened up my mind. And I decided that perhaps impossible is really possible.

And so I challenge myself. To do my degrees, 192 + 40 modular credits, in a really short time. I’ve even made plans for it. Goodness, I never really made plans for anything before. And that will require me to overload for the next 4 years of my life. Suffocate myself, only to breathe again.

And that’s when I need to break the trust in myself, in its entirety. Break who I used to be, and start having faith in myself.